The chameleon man

Luckily for him, MTV held auditions. Pathak got through. “House Arrest, my show with Ranvir Shorey, became a hit. It was complete madness on the sets and we were like two naughty boys having a ball while their parents were away,” he tells you. Interestingly, the duo will return to the small screen this month with Ranvir, Vinay aur Kaun? “We will hang out with celebrities, ask questions, sing and dance together and intersperse it with gags,” he reveals.

The sun may be shining bright on him now, but there was little to cheer about most of the roles he got in the past. “I played a US-returned guy in Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega and started getting similar offers after that. Then I did a police commissioner’s role in Jism and the same story was repeated. Though the professions would vary from an inspector to a lawyer, but the character sketch would be almost the same.”

Bheja Fry was the rescue act. “I could sense a change after this movie. People started feeling secure casting me in a character role telling a bigger tale,” he says candidly. It has been raining offers that are far from the mundane. Pathak has six releases lined up in a brief span of three months this year. Apart from acting as a cop in Manorama Six Feet Under, he will be playing a gambler in Sriram Raghvan’s thriller Johnny Gaddar, a henchman in Rajat Kapoor’s Mithya and a detective in Arindam Nandy’s Via Darjeeling. “I narrate a story on a rainy night in Via Darjeeling, with the listeners trying to give their own conclusion to it. It’s a film based on the Bengali concept of adda, where a group of friends share political, social or fictitious thoughts,” he says about the movie that’s releasing in September end.

Pathak will also be starring in Khoya Khoya Chand, a movie directed by Sudhir Mishra, which is slated to hit the theatres in October. “Soha Ali Khan plays an actor in the ’50s and I am one of the three men who shape her life as an actor.” But if there is one movie that he is particularly excited about, it is the much-awaited Yash Raj film Aaja Nachle. “I play a middle class man who leads a monotonous life, but it all changes as he gets drawn to theatre.”

Even as the film sees Madhuri Dixit returning to the big screen after a hiatus of six years, it will give Pathak a chance to leap out of the small budget movie space. So keyed up is he that the actor can’t resist delivering what sounds a tad like all those ‘thank you’ speeches you hear at the Oscars. “It’s the best cinema experience I’ve had so far and it’s because of director Anil Mehta’s vision, Adi’s (Aditya Chopra) conviction in the cast, Madhuri Dixit and the entire ensemble.”

He may gush about the world of cinema, but surprisingly, acting was not his first love. “I come from Bhojpur in Bihar and I never thought I would be an actor one day. I studied English literature at Allahabad University and wanted to be a teacher. In fact, I was a tutor to board students who would come to me asking for help,” he says. Then what took him to the State University of New York at Stony Brook for an MBA degree? “Everybody is allowed to be young and stupid.

My parents wanted me to be successful and an MBA course seemed to be a lucrative option. I was in the top 10 rankers in class and I believed I could be a good salesman,” he says. But then one fine day he went to watch Peter Shaffer’s play Equus and out of the window went his business and accounts books. “The story touched my soul somewhere and I felt this immediate urge to be a part of that world,” he says. Suddenly, the actor in him took over and he dropped out of the MBA program to enroll himself in a Bachelor of Fine Arts course.

And the moment he talks about the time spent brushing his acting skills, you see his eyes light up and his lips curl into a smile. Momentarily, he even seems to forget the ache in his injured groin as he reminiscences about the student days in the US. Any roles that he still remembers?

“I pumped gas, bartended at weddings, worked as a receptionist at a cardiologist’s office and even dressed up as chicken mascot to earn some extra bucks,” comes the prompt reply. Now we know what makes him a pro at character roles.